Play the Fool: A Mystery

by Lina Chern

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This debut by Lina Chern is a terrific addition to your modern amateur sleuth collection. Are you looking for a quick, comfortable, and thoroughly entertaining read? Then Play the Fool checks off all the boxes.

WINNER OF THE MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD • A cynical tarot card reader seeks to uncover the truth about her friend’s mysterious death in this delightfully clever whodunit, “a delicious blend of suspense and madcap humor” (Library Journal, starred review).

For Katie True, a keen gut and quick wit are just tools of the trade. After a failed attempt at adulting in Chicago, she’s back in the suburbs living a bit too close to her overbearing parents, jumping from one dead-end job to the next, and flipping through her tarot deck for guidance. Then along comes Marley.

Mysterious, worldly, and comfortable in her own skin, Marley takes a job at the mall where Katie peddles Russian tchotchkes. The two just get each other. Marley doesn’t try to fix Katie’s life or pretend to be someone she’s not, and Katie thinks that with Marley’s friendship, she just might make it through this rough patch after all. Until the day when Katie, having been encouraged by Marley to practice soothsaying, reads the cards for someone who stumbles into her shop. But when she sneaks a glance at his phone, she finds more than intel to improve her clairvoyance. She finds a photo. Of Marley. With a gunshot wound to the head.

The bottom falls out of Katie’s world. Her best friend is dead? Who killed her? She quickly realizes there are some things her tarot cards can’t foresee, and she must put her razor-sharp instincts to the ultimate test. But Katie’s recklessness lands her in the crossfire of a threat she never saw coming. Now she must use her street smarts and her inner Strength card to solve Marley’s murder—or risk losing everything.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593500668
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/28/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	95,382
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lina Chern has been published in Mystery Weekly, The Marlboro Review, the Bellingham Review, Rhino, The Collagist, Black Fox Literary magazine, and the Coil. She lives in the Chicago area with her family. Play the Fool is her debut novel.

Read an Excerpt

1

I always knew Marley would disappear. We worked across from each other at the Deerpath Shopping Center, me at the Russian knickknack place and her at the goth boutique, where she rang up anarchy T-­shirts for tweens in five-­hundred-­dollar Nikes. She was a lot like me—smart enough to get the hell out of Lake Terrace once she grew up, but dumb enough to come back. For how long, I didn’t know. She put out a chill bloom-­where-­you’re-­planted vibe but always looked like she was watching the exits, marking the days until she could peel out and leave Lake Terrace in the rearview.

When she did disappear, it didn’t go down how I expected.

The guy who set the whole thing off walked into Firebird Imports on a Sunday, the deadest day of the week and consequently the only time my boss, Larissa, trusted me to run the place alone. Less for me to screw up. I was laying out a three-­card tarot spread when the store’s heavy glass door slammed open.

I jerked up. He was plastered against the inside of the door, breathing hard and staring out into the mall—a weight-­lifter-­looking guy with a bristly haircut on a blocky head, a faded Gold’s Gym T-­shirt, and jogger sweats. He spun toward me and I froze, hands on the cards. There was an angry red gash on the man’s forehead.

A low warning throbbed in my mind. “Are you— Do you need—”

He took a stumbling step into the store and collided with a sign reading 60% off all musical spoons. The sign bowled over and he floundered after it, hooking it with his arm before it hit the ground. He looked like he was tangoing with a beautiful lady who had been, alas, enchanted into a piece of advertising.

A squeaky honk flew out of me, part dimwit guffaw, part concerned oh! The guy jiggled the sign back into place. I glanced across the mall court: was Marley watching this? At Stone Blossom, the “alternative lifestyle boutique” where Marley worked, a pale mope in a Black Flag T-­shirt slouched at the counter. No Marley. I hadn’t seen her all day.

“Do you need a tissue?” I pointed to my own forehead. “Or an ambulance or something?” My eyes slid to my phone. The low-­charge light was blinking, as usual. I didn’t have extra cash lying around for new tech toys, so I plundered my brother’s castoffs. By the time they reached me, their best days were far behind them.

The guy flinched like he’d already forgotten I was there. A red splotch crawled down his temple and landed—plop—on his shirt. “I’m fine,” he said hoarsely and disappeared in the jungle of display racks at the front of the store. I craned my neck after him. At least if he stole something, I could tell Larissa a piece of merchandise had made it out of here today. He picked up a lacquered box and stared at it with glassy eyes. “Just looking around.”

Shocker. Everyone was always just looking around. Earlier, a guy came in looking for a Cubs jersey, and I had to inform him, reading off our perfectly visible sign, that we sold only “fine goods from Russia and Eastern Europe.” Then a mom came in with three kids and a screaming baby, looking for a bathroom. I pointed her to the family one out in the mall, where someone had Sharpied a set of anatomically correct genitals on the dad icon.

“Suit yourself.” I sat down and swept the loose cards into the deck. I pegged this guy for a Cup, but a sloppy, backassward one, awash in reversed Swords. All emotion, no control. He’d probably just gotten in a parking lot shoving match with some other muscle-­head over a dinged-­up Jeep. In my head, I was already telling Marley about him. We’d been hanging out every Sunday night after our shifts for the past two months, in a tiny courtyard off the emptying forty-­year-­old white stone hulk of the mall. We talked while she smoked her unfiltered cigarettes, lighting up the dark with tiny fireballs. She was older than me by ten years or so, a tall, lean bruiser of a woman watching me from behind a wall of crimson-­streaked hair, black eyeliner, and silver jewelry. The kind of look I’d always toyed with but never had the stones to pull off. She was my best friend, if you can call someone you’ve known only two months your best friend. It helped not to have any other friends. We were like rare specimens of some exotic breed of loser.

“Anybody actually buy this junk?” Gym Guy’s thick voice burst through my thoughts. He picked up a miniature balalaika and twanged its strings.

I did a quick mental tally of the bathroom family. “We just had six customers in here before you.” This guy was breaking all of Larissa’s rules: touching stuff, loitering, wearing sweats as regular clothing. Also being a dick, but that was more my rule.

Gym Guy doubled over, clutching his gut and grabbing a shelf of decorative plates for balance. The plates jingled.

“Hey.” I hopped off my stool. “Are you . . . ?”

He produced a bottle of pills. “I’m fine,” he huffed. “I got a nervous stomach is all.”

My phone uttered the first in its series of death beeps. Larissa was too cheap to get a landline for the store, so if this guy was going to pass out, he needed to do it before my phone died or I’d be stuck carting him to the hospital in my Ford Fiesta. I watched him shoot a handful of pills into his mouth and crunch loudly. “You know,” I said, “we have water if you—”

“I said I was fine,” he snapped.

A sorry laugh nearly bubbled out of me at this knucklehead pretending he wasn’t upset that someone had just bashed his damn head in. He’d probably been told all his life to suck it up, grow a pair, don’t be a pussy. Whatever road rage pushy-­pushy he’d just survived had obviously messed with him, but hell if he’d let anybody see that. He was already hiding the bottle of pills.

“Have it your way.” I sat back down, watching him out of the corner of my eye.

He fished his phone out of his pocket, glanced at it, then stuffed it back in. He wasn’t here to shop, but he wasn’t leaving. He kept looking out into the mall like he was waiting for someone. Or killing time until it was safe to leave. I stacked the cards up for the Vegas dealer shuffle my aunt Rosie taught me when I was a kid. The deck went frrrrt into a neat dome in my hands.

Gym Guy swiveled toward me. He zeroed in on the cards. “Is that those fortune-­telling cards?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Interesting. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a guy who put much stock in spooks and spirits. I spread the cards back out, moving in slow circles. “Want me to read them for you?”

He looked out into the mall. “You know how to do that?”

“I picked it up here and there.” Aunt Rosie was a full-­on grifter who hung around carnivals wearing headscarves and bilking grandmas out of their Christmas money. She’d started teaching me to read tarot cards when I was six, on one of the extended drop-­ins that happened whenever she ran out of money or ditched her latest sleazebag boyfriend. My parents let her crash with us in exchange for “babysitting,” which consisted mostly of me accompanying Rosie on fantastic, semi-­reputable errands that I knew better than to report to my parents. I spent a lot of time in empty daytime bars sipping Cokes and eating maraschino cherries while Rosie picked up crudely wrapped packages in the back room, or racing back and forth between monitors at the OTB to help her track her bets. She wasn’t super great with kids, so she just treated me like a very short adult, which I loved. Hey, she’d say, picking out a stranger from across the casino buffet, what’s his story? Then she’d point out all the signs you could pick up from people when they thought no one was watching, all the details they broadcasted loud and clear without saying a word. He’s here because he hates it at home, she would say, or She hides the credit card bills from her husband. “What’s their story?” was my favorite babysitting game.

Editorial Reviews

01/23/2023

Katie True, the 29-year-old narrator of Chern’s enjoyable debut, is stuck in a dead-end job at a “Russian knickknack place” in a mall outside Chicago. Her only friend, Marley, works in a goth boutique across the way. Secure and self-sufficient, Marley is everything that Katie is not. With Marley’s encouragement, Katie, whose only skill is reading tarot cards, takes her first steps toward discovering her place in life, in defiance of her caring but judgmental family. Then a bleeding man stumbles into Katie’s shop and asks her to read his cards. A panicked Katie sneaks a glance at his phone while he’s distracted and spots a photo of Marley with a gunshot wound to the head. Katie’s quest to discover the truth about her friend’s death leads her afoul of organized criminals as well as a disturbingly attractive, by-the-books police detective. Mystery-first readers may find the plot a bit scant, but Katie is a heroine anyone will root for. This good-natured romp works best when it focuses on Katie’s efforts to negotiate the gentle art of adulthood. Agent: Joanna Mackenzie, Nelson Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

With a delicious blend of suspense and madcap humor, Chern’s standout debut is guaranteed to delight fans of Lisa Lutz [and] Alan Bradley, and readers who enjoy witty, fast-paced mysteries.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“A sharp, unique, and memorable debut, Play the Fool is unlike any mystery I’ve read before—and that’s a good thing! Lina Chern’s voice shines brightly, and readers will be immediately drawn into Katie True’s twisty and gripping investigation. It’s a fantastic read.”—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity

“Lina Chern’s Play the Fool pulls off a tricky blend of humor and menace that had me flipping pages like crazy. The mystery is fresh and twisty, but it’s her characters (and voice) that kept me enthralled. I can’t believe this is a debut novel, and I can’t wait for more.”—Duane Swierczynski, award-winning author of Canary

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2023

DEBUT Katie True hails from a solidly middle-class family. She was expected to graduate college, secure a respectable career, then marry and start procreating. Instead, she dropped out of university, became a professional psychic, and began working a series of dead-end jobs. Her latest gig is selling Eastern European tchotchkes at a failing mall outside of Chicago. The only positive is Marley, her new best friend who works at the "alternative lifestyle boutique" and possesses all the self-confidence and bravado that Katie lacks. When Katie discovers that Marley has been brutally murdered, she sets off to find Marley's killer. With no body and no evidence, she begins a frenetic investigation with the assistance of the laconic yet fetching Officer Jamie and her quirky genius brother Owen. When they learn that they aren't the only ones on the case, it doesn't take a psychic to realize that the situation could turn deadly. VERDICT The charming and eccentric Katie will captivate readers with her wry sense of humor and self-deprecating asides. With a delicious blend of suspense and madcap humor, Chern's standout debut is guaranteed to delight fans of Lisa Lutz, Alan Bradley, and readers who enjoy witty, fast-paced mysteries.—Amy Nolan

Library Journal